I bet that Leno is a guest on Letterman within the next year. It will be a huge media event, obviously. But Dave has the ability to reconcile with Jay - at least to have him on his show.

You guys do remember the *Letterman* Super Bowl promo a few years ago with Leno & Oprah, right? It was very funny, because it was so surprising.

Also, on one of the Letteman episodes I've watched recently (from within the past year), a guest asked him and he DID say he had talked to Leno on the phone (IIRC) "within the past few months" of that interview.

Leno stopped doing stand up shows. Even during the height of the Tonight Show, Leno was doing 120-150 standup dates a year. He's a total workaholic. He does standup every weekend and almost every night when the show is dark.

Quote:

Originally Posted by smak

^never

-smak-

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turtleboy

Where are you from and what do you do?

I'm not understanding the response, but if it was supposed to be a snarky comment, it wasn't merited. Smak was just trying to point out that it seems you meant to say "Leno *never* stopped doing stand up shows." You missed the word never.

I'm not understanding the response, but if it was supposed to be a snarky comment, it wasn't merited. Smak was just trying to point out that it seems you meant to say "Leno *never* stopped doing stand up shows." You missed the word never.

Sorry, inside joke. Smak and I (along with smeek and others) saw Leno together in Vegas a few years ago. Leno asked smak where he was from and what he did.

I've never cared for Fallon's show, even though I think he is very talented. For example, I think the various commercials Fallon has done to be very good and worth watching (I don't know who created the commercials; may not have been Fallon.) But I just don't find Fallon's show that interesting, even when he has a guest I am interested in. Something about his interview style, or his show's structure, I guess...

I record the various late night shows in case they have a guest I want to see. But only Ferguson's show holds much interest for me beyond the guests.

Let me admit upfront that a lot of my pop culture tastes are entirely conventional, and I'm also an aging Gen Xer so soon to be out of the age range that advertisers consider desirable....

I've long preferred Leno to Letterman or O'Brien (although I do find Triumph the Comic Insult Dog absolutely hilarious), perhaps precisely because of the broad, vanilla monologue. Yes, Bill Clinton has been out of office for 14 years, but I still find Clinton jokes kind of funny. You could play a video clip of that "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" press conference, and I would spew whatever I was drinking over the keyboard. I was kind of disappointed

Spoiler:

that the last Leno show did not have a clip of the "Mambo No. 5" parody song (i.e. "a little bit of Monica"), or to date me further, the Dancing Itos.

On the bright side, I guess I can recapture about 30 minutes of my late night and go to bed earlier now.

Interesting article. The author points out again and again how bad Leno is, with old, tired, and outdated jokes. But yet he feels bad for him.

I'm not particularly a fan of his.
I met him once briefly and he seemed a nice enough guy.

I've seen maybe a handful of his shows since he returned to the Tonight Show.
(Having the orchestra sting his punchlines annoyed me. enough not to watch much)

But I did tune into his last show just to see and by the end, I did feel sorry for him.

I mean, he may not be the best comedian around but he worked hard and he landed his dream job which he loved doing.

And from his bosses' point of view, he did the job very well (holding the #1 spot for all those years) and he was a model employee.

His reward was to have his dream job taken away from him twice while his job performance was still good.

And to be unrealistically vilified for his bosses' half baked ideas.
(From everything I've read and seen, I see no reason to think that he screwed over Conan O'Brien.)

Realistically, I don't think he could have maintained his lead for too much longer. I suspect that he had maybe a year or two at maintaining his lead and I think he believes that as well.
It would have been nice if NBC allowed him to leave on his own terms though as a reward of all his loyalty and good work over the years.

Although he basically admitted in the 60 Minutes interview that he know that he was going to get screwed.

"I always tell new people in show business, I say, 'Look, show business pays you a lot of money, because eventually you're gonna get screwed,'" he explained. "'And when you get screwed, you will have this pile of money off to the side already."

And to be unrealistically vilified for his bosses' half baked ideas.
(From everything I've read and seen, I see no reason to think that he screwed over Conan O'Brien.)

Totally agree with this. Leno got screwed over by the NBC execs when they tried to force him out and replace him with Conan, and then both Conan and Leno got screwed by those same execs when the execs decided to boot Conan and put Leno back in there. Some will say that Leno shouldn't have agreed to take the job back, but he never wanted to give it up in the first place, so he had no reason to sit on the sidelines just to make a point.

It will be interesting to see if Leno's standup act gets more contemporary since he won't be telling the most topical stuff to a few million people a night on TV.

He shouldn't have taken the 10PM spot. He should have said Eff You and gone to Fox or ABC and to compete directly.

Or just been gracious and retired from TV, after they'd paid him, what, $230 million over the years? Not to mention, he'd had five years to get used to the idea, and a total run of seventeen years in the job the first time. We should all be so screwed.

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He shouldn't have taken the 10PM spot. He should have said Eff You and gone to Fox or ABC and to compete directly.

Maybe not but he still wanted to work. NBC backed up the Brinks truck to him and guaranteed him two years plus he didn't have to even move studios.
It was a great deal for him.
Even though I have always stated that putting him on 5 nights a week at 10 PM was a suck idea for NBC, I don't blame him for taking the deal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wmcbrine

Or just been gracious and retired from TV, after they'd paid him, what, $230 million over the years? Not to mention, he'd had five years to get used to the idea, and a total run of seventeen years in the job the first time. We should all be so screwed.

But he didn't want to retire.
Why should he have to if he's still capable of doing the job and someone wants to pay him money to do so?

He shouldn't have taken the 10PM spot. He should have said Eff You and gone to Fox or ABC and to compete directly.

As he said in his final show the other night, he's worked at NBC for 20 years. He considers those people family. He doesn't know anyone at the other networks. Asking him to leave NBC and go work for another network was basically like asking him to abandon his family and go start a new one. That just wasn't in him.

And then when NBC offered him the option of basically continuing what he wanted to do all along, with more pay and in a more prominent timeslot, it was kind of a no-brainer at that point. With hindsight, we all know it wasn't a good move. But at the time, how could he have said no to that offer? Do you really believe it was so clear cut that the 10 pm show would be a failure that he should have known that up front?